Skipper Smriti Mandhana led from the front by scoring a fluent 68, as Trailblazers defeated Supernovas by 16 runs in the final of the Women’s T-20 challenge in Sharjah on Monday.
After being asked to bat first by Supernovas, the pair of Mandhana and Deandra Dottin started brilliantly by adding 71 runs for the opening wicket before the latter fell to Poonam Yadav for 20.
Mandhana’s wicket in the 15th over brought about a collapse for Trailblazers as they collapsed from 101/2 to 117 for 8.
Radha Yadav wrecked the batting by dismissing Richa Ghosh, Deepti Sharma, Sophie Ecclestone, Jhulan Goswami and Harleen Deol cheaply as Trailblazers failed to get momentum. In the end they ended up with 118/8 at the end of their allotted 20 overs.
Yadav ended up with figures of 5/16 while Poonam and Siriwardene claimed a wicket each.
Chasing 119, Supernovas lost in form Chamari Athapaththu leg before wicket to Sophie Ecclestone for 6.
The pair of Jemimah Rodrigues and Tania Bhatia added 24 runs for the second wicket, before the latter became Deepti Sharma’s victim.
Rodrigues became Sharma’s second victim as she was caught by Natthakan Chantham leaving their side in a spot of bother at 37/3.
Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur along with Shashikala Siriwardene anchored the innings with a 37 run stand for the fourth wicket, before the latter was caught at short fine leg by Jhulan Goswami off Salma Khatun.
Supernovas lost 4 wickets for 28 runs and they ended up with 102/7 in their allotted 20 overs.
Salma Kutan was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 3 /18 and Deepti Sharma claimed 2 wickets.
Smriti Mandhana was declared the Man of the Match, while Radha Yadav was declared the Player of the Series.